Course Catalog

When: Fall and Spring Terms

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

This course will cover:

• Organization of companies and engineering groups.
• Financial fluency, including time value of money, return on investment, income, and cash flow statements, and balance sheets.  
• Management of people and organizations.
• Project and program management techniques and tools.
• Management of research, development, and design.
• Operations management, including manufacturing operations and supply chains.

Restrictions on Enrollment: Must have at least Sophomore standing

Note: This course is required for the Engineering Management minor.

When: Fall and Spring Terms

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

This course will cover:

• Written and oral communications in the business setting.
• Written communications including technical reports and papers, memoranda, and electronic communications.
• Design and delivery of effective presentations.  
• Informal communication styles and techniques.
• Communication across cultures.

Restrictions on Enrollment: Must have at least Sophomore standing

Note: This course is required for the Engineering Management minor.

When: Fall and Spring Terms

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

This course will cover:

• Development of knowledge, skills, and mindset essential for leading programs and teams in a business organization.  
• Creating high-performance teams and shared visions
• Cultural differences in leadership style 
• Ethical considerations
• Fostering creativity and communicating to inspire
• Influencing without authority
• Managing conflict and organizational change 
• Understanding personalities of self & others and emotional intelligence

Restrictions on Enrollment: Must have at least Sophomore standing

Note: This course is required for the Engineering Management minor.

When: Fall and Spring Terms

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

This course will cover:

• Knowledge and skill development for students who aspire to lead and manage innovation initiatives in technology-based companies.
• Technology strategy and its role in the overall business strategy of commercial firms.
• Role of innovation in entrepreneurial ventures and established firms.
• Skills to present new product development proposals to senior management and/or prospective investors.

Restrictions on Enrollment: Must have at least Sophomore standing

Note: This course is required for the Engineering Management minor.

When: Some Fall and Spring Terms

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

This course varies in topic each time that it is offered throughout the academic year. Full description and details can be found on SIS during the time of registration.

When:  Fall and Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  None - all are welcome

Description:

This introductory course is designed for students curious about how to unleash their creative spirits to solve big problems with innovative solutions. You will learn a variety of skills, including ideation techniques, design thinking and more to help stimulate brainstorming and creativity. You will apply these skills in rapid ideation workshops, where you will repeatedly challenge your brain to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to real world problems in startup, corporate, non-profit and government settings. You will develop creative problem-solving capabilities that can help you succeed in personal and professional settings.

Along the way, you will meet innovators and entrepreneurs, hear their stories, and learn how they apply these mindsets and skillsets to their work.

When:  Fall and Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Sophomore standing is required.

Description:

There is no better way to understand how to create, plan and run a business than to learn how to start one. In this course we will introduce the core mindset and skillset behind new venture creation. Students will learn how to systematically explore their own passions and desire for impact to find problems worth solving, team up with other students with similar industry or sector interests, and learn how to build a new, standalone venture by building and pitching one during the semester. Students will learn tools and frameworks from practicing entrepreneurs. The mindset and skillset you will learn will form a strong foundation for you to further explore additional topics in innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Upon completion of the course, students will have learned to speak the language of business. Specifically, they will:

• Learn to be nimble, agile, iterative, and know how to “fail fast”
• Understand the basic principles behind innovation and new venture creation, including but not limited to:
  • Exploring their own sense of purpose, and finding problems that are important and worth solving, with the potential for significant impact
  • Analyzing market opportunities and selecting a target market segment
  • Understanding your market and customer
  • Building a solution that is different and better than the alternative
  • Developing a go-to-market strategy and business model
  • Building a marketing plan to raise awareness & generate leads
  • Learning how to make money and build a financially sustainable venture
  • Understanding what it takes to build and contribute to a high performing team, and the logistics around building a company
  • Effective presentation skills

When:  Fall and Spring

Credits:  4

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. Recommended prerequisite: ENT 101

Description:

This course focuses on developing and applying the financial skills that are needed to successfully manage commercial and social enterprises. Students will learn how to construct a financial business plan for a startup, analyze and contrast the financial statements of existing companies, and evaluate business opportunities to optimize financial outcomes and avoid financial peril. Students will also learn about the different forms of company financing and how professional investors and lenders evaluate companies. By the end of the course students will understand how to financially position a company to maximize its potential of raising appropriate capital. The course is taught through a variety of readings, problem sets, case studies and team exercises. It is hands-on.

This course has a rigorous workload, yet is often mentioned in senior surveys as the most informative and relevant course they have taken at Tufts. This includes the numerous problem sets and Harvard Business School cases previously mentioned, as well as a capstone term project where each student will create a fully vetted financial plan for a startup or existing company. After taking the course students will gain a mastery of how to:

1. analyze the financial statements of a company
2. build pro forma financial statements for new product (or service) initiatives, department budgets within a company, or a simple business
3. quantify and apply core financial return concepts such as net present value, internal rate of return, multiple on investment, payback, ROI, leveraged versus unleveraged return, dilution, and break-even analysis to vital business applications
4. apply the financial principles to evaluate a new product or business idea, and its impact on the financial health and performance of the business
5. complete a simple valuation of a business and construct its enterprise value, market value of equity, post-money value and pre-money value

When:  Fall, Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. Recommended prerequisite: ENT 101

Description:

This course focuses on institutional and product marketing methods used by start-up to medium-sized companies. After an overview of basic marketing principles, the course will cover the spectrum from day-to-day marketing activities of the entrepreneurial business to positioning and strategy. Students will learn to analyze, formulate, and implement marketing strategies, explore concepts for understanding customer behavior and creating an entrepreneurial marketing strategy, and learn the fundamentals of market research, pricing, and reaching and selling to customers.

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. Recommended Pre-requisite: ENT101

Description:

Marketing isn’t Sales, and Sales isn’t Marketing, but they are both joined at the hip since every product, every service and job needs to “sold” in order to close any deal. Our “Science of Sales” course explores process, tools, technology, metrics and most importantly, the people that are required to actually sell, close orders and bring in revenue.

When:  Fall, Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have sophomore standing.

Description:

This course is designed to help students develop the knowledge, confidence, skills, and self-image necessary to pursue entrepreneurial ventures in such domains as business, government, and public service. It provides a foundation in the fundamentals of entrepreneurial leadership, as well as a source of inspiration and energy in the art and science of taking visions and bringing them to reality.

When:  Fall

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  None

Description:

Multi-disciplinary perspective of innovative technology-based design process for societal and community influence. Elements and principles of design from product development process, thought and emotion, ethics and responsibility. Experiments to explore failure and iteration, reflection for self-discovery and innovation. Articulation and expression via written, oral and pre-recorded audio and video presentations showing measurable impact of solutions as societal benefits.

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing.

Description:

Innovative Social Enterprises is structured to provide students a highly interactive exploration of core skills vital to social entrepreneurs. We start with awareness (self, context, relationships) and move quickly to practicing requisite disciplines (asking questions; testing and reframing assumptions; forming teams and other alliances; identifying opportunities, risks, and resources; giving and critiquing pitches; making go / no-go decisions). We will practice an iterative rhythm of weekly information gathering, sensing, assessment, and reframing, with emphasis on creating compelling value for multiple stakeholders. Students will engage in individual reflection, individual and team pitching, and active discussion. This course is designed to equip students with a practical discipline of asking effective questions. Whether students aim to found social enterprises, join social enterprises, or possibly fund, regulate, or incubate social enterprises, they will come away with sharpened agency and actionable practices for innovative leadership in the social enterprise sphere.

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. This course requires department consent (Computer Science major or minor). Pre-requites include: Computer science or data science majors and minors with junior or senior standing OR completion of a Computer Science undergraduate degree prior to enrollment.

Description:

This is an introductory entrepreneurship course for Computer Science students. The course provides an overview of entrepreneurship, develops an entrepreneurial perspective, and provides a framework for learning the fundamentals of the essential elements of entrepreneurial ventures. This course is specifically directed toward software-related industries and products. Students learn how to develop their technical ideas into potential business opportunities, and to explore their likelihood of becoming viable businesses. They learn how to do market research, to develop go-to-market strategies, value propositions, and to differentiate their products or services from actual or potential competitors. The course consists of a balance of lectures, projects, case studies, and interaction with entrepreneurs and computer scientists who participate in entrepreneurial organizations.

When:  Fall

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. This course satisfies the Foundational Course requirement for the ENT Minor.

Description:

This course covers the entrepreneurial process from conception to commercialization or launch of a new venture focused on a consumer product. It looks at both process and people involved in assessing ideas, exploiting opportunities, gathering resources, and converting concepts into financially and technically viable businesses. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which students can apply their different skill sets and abilities to enter and succeed in business. The course seeks to help students think through the career path that makes the most sense for them given their particular backgrounds and aspirations in both an entrepreneurial or corporate environments.

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing.

Description:

“Bringing a Product to Market” covers the design process of a consumer product from ideation to pre-production of a new product.

The course teaches the consumer centered design process through lectures and the creation, engineering, and prototyping of a novel product. Students learn to identify and evaluate a problem (opportunity), create, develop, test (with consumers), and
select best prototyping strategies for their product.

Basic project and risk management, engineering, and analysis skills are used to deliver a robust working product on time and on budget. Students are assumed to be competent in basic problem solving skills.

When:  Fall

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have sophomore standing.

Description:

Entrepreneurial Business Law is an interactive class featuring speakers from the private equity, venture capital, and investment banking worlds as well as executives who have exited through a public offering or sale of their company. We will explore legal issues and considerations that are common to businesses as they are formed and throughout their business life cycle. The course will focus on several aspects relating to formation and seed and venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings and securities laws considerations, as well as employment and intellectual property matters and governance considerations. There will also be opportunities to negotiate various financing and other transactions.

When: Spring Term

Credits: 3 credits

Location: Boston Campus

Description:

Please note that the location for this in-person course is the Friedman School in Boston (not Medford).

This is a cross-listed, Level 200 graduate course. Undergraduate students who wish to take this course will need to reach out to Professor Jimmy Edgerton for permission to enroll.

This course is designed to introduce students to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial theory and practice relevant to the nutrition/food space will be discussed from the perspectives of a stand-alone start-up company and within larger organizations. This course is designed for students interested in exploring how entrepreneurship can be incorporated into food and nutrition and who may wish to begin to build an entrepreneurial skill set. Course topics will include ideation, finding potential investors, pitch development and pitching skills, competitive analysis, market sizing, business plan development, basic entrepreneurial finance and legal issues, entrepreneurial ethics, and management skills needed to run an entrepreneurial venture. Final products of the course will be a pitch presentation and a written business plan.

Restrictions on Enrollment: By Permission of Instructor

When:  Fall

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have sophomore standing.

Description:

Introduction to Making is an exploratory course that gives you the practical, hands-on skills to make working prototypes of your products. You will learn to make physical things, make them work, and integrate them with electronics/software.  Common fabrication techniques including foamboard, 3D printing, laser cutting, electronics, and  Arduino programming. You will be demonstrating your hands-on skills as well as your entrepreneurial spirit in an individual final project.

When:  Fall, Section B

Credits:  2

Enrollment Restrictions:  No enrollment restrictions. Freshmen are welcome.

Description:

There is not one path to entrepreneurship. In this course, students learn and unlearn what it means to be an entrepreneur and the various paths one can take towards entrepreneurship. Whether starting in a traditional corporate job, joining a startup or monetizing your side hustle, students will learn from experts in the field how to leverage their experiences at Tufts and beyond to progress towards their ultimate goals. Students will engage in discussions and workshops to understand their narrative and envision their entrepreneurial future.

When:  Fall

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have sophomore standing.

Description:

Nonprofits are a valued engine for community engagement and innovation across the country. They play a highly visible and essential role meeting community needs, and they serve as laboratories for experimental, innovative strategies supporting individual opportunity, expression, and community equity objectives. This increasingly complex sector is built on the desire to do good through scalable, sustainable organizational strategies that deliver impact.

You will learn about what it takes to be a successful nonprofit: vision, resources, leadership, and execution. Through case analysis, press analysis, group discussions, and interactions with nonprofit leaders, you will learn how entrepreneurship and philanthropy are deeply intertwined in healthy, high-performing organizations. You will also develop the skills to assess the connection between nonprofits, social change and justice through direct conversation with grant makers and nonprofit leaders, and will devise a grantmaking strategy awarding $25,000 in grant funding to local nonprofits through support from former Tufts trustee Nathan Gantcher.

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have sophomore standing.

Description:

Team and Talent Management is a course focused on the most critical success factor in creating not just young startups and emerging companies, but also any business of any size. This course focuses on the entire chain of team building and talent management from building high-performing teams, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees to the overall personnel management of the business. This course outlines the strategic planning surrounding building the organizational structure while exploring the tactics of objective setting, hiring and firing decision making, compensation structures and reviews, and employee development. This course is open to undergraduates and graduate students who are interested in bringing an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset to both startups and corporate jobs early in their careers.

When: Spring Term

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-campus

Description:

At times navigating your life can be confounding if not terrifying. You may ask yourself… Who am I? Where have I come from? What is my future? Approach life challenges like a designer: through experimentation, wayfinding, prototyping and constant iterations. Students embrace their creativity, curiosity, bias to action, reframing, awareness, and radical collaboration.  Students learn to design a guidance system that will help them to steer them through work, play, and life. Designed for undergraduate students, particularly Freshmen and Sophomores, who have not taken an ENT foundational course and are interested in learning more about innovation and entrepreneurship.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

When:  Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing.

Description:

The Entrepreneurial Internship course allows students to earn credits while working as an intern for their company sponsor during the semester. Under the guidance of a faculty member serving as an entrepreneurial advisor, students have a chance to apply concepts learned in the classroom and acquire new skills as they address real life challenges.

In this course, the student assumes an employee role in the company. Internships typically involve students serving in a functional role with an entrepreneurial focus, such as product management, entrepreneurial marketing and sales.

This internship will be graded (see syllabus for details on requirements and enrollment process).

When:  Fall, Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. Registration requires department consent. Having taken the course you are proposing to support and earned an "A" grade is a prerequisite.

Description:

“Inside the Classroom” allows students to serve as Classroom Operating Officers (COO), where they receive course credit for providing leadership, mentorship and student support for Entrepreneurship courses. By taking Inside the Classroom, you will assist in coaching peers, organizing course work, attendance tracking, and observing group work.

When:  Fall, Spring

Credits:  3

Enrollment Restrictions:  Must have at least Sophomore standing. Registration requires department consent.

Description:

This immersive course enables students to apply the learning and skills acquired by other courses on Entrepreneurship to the creation and development of their own new venture. Under the guidance of a faculty member serving as an entrepreneurial advisor, students have a chance to apply concepts learned in the classroom and acquire new skills as they address real life challenges.

In this course, the student assumes a co-founder role in the venture. The student will operate with the mindset of a business owner (responsible for overall strategy and operations for all aspects of the venture), not a functional leader (responsible for one department such as marketing, sales, engineering or the like).

The new venture that the student is building can be for-profit, not-for-profit or in the context of a government agency or university or association.

This field study will be graded (see Syllabus for rubric, restrictions and enrollment process).

When: Fall Term

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

Theory and practice of leadership. Development and application of leadership skills across a range of contexts including startups, corporations, and nonprofits. Focus placed on developing self-awareness in preparation for the initial leadership position.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

Notes: Cross-listed as ENT 193.20

When: Fall Term (First Half)

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

Introduction to sound money management in personal and professional finance. Creation of greater financial awareness, and development of financial vocabulary. Financial requirements across life stages including student finances, purchasing the first home planning, and investing for life events and a comfortable retirement. Basic business finances, such as budgeting, accounting statements, and taxation.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

Notes: Cross-listed as ENT 193.21

When: Spring Term

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-campus

Description:

Development of effective communications skills across a range of personal and professional scenarios, interpersonal communication, networking, and best practices in both verbal and non-verbal communications. Written communication skills for developing formal reports, drafting emails, and using social media.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

When: Spring Term

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-campus

Description:

Practical examination of marketing from startups to nonprofits, including opportunities to gain hands-on, applicable experience, emphasizing the mindset and skillset to apply marketing principles. Consumer behavior, market research, audience targeting and segmentation, positioning, digital marketing, and the elements of the marketing mix. Importance of personal branding and the application of marketing principles in professional settings.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

When: Fall Term

Credits: 3 credits

Location: On-Campus

Description:

Exploring the skills and knowledge needed across an individual's career. Planning for internships and placements, preparing for a job search and gaining the skills and confidence for interviewing and starting a job. Students will develop the skills and knowledge needed to plan for a successful and fulfilling career.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None

Notes: Cross-listed as ENT 193.24

When: Spring Term

Credits: 2 credits

Location: On-campus

Description:

Holistic view of a human life. Work-life balance, mindfulness, personal ethics, physical and mental health, setting achievable and meaningful goals, and developing the skills of personal effectiveness. How to contribute to global society with an ethical mindset and cultural sensitivity.

Restrictions on Enrollment: None